Stephanie Mittman Read Online Free PDF Page B

would turnbefore it reached the glass. He had made lots of promises, but in the Merganser house it was the promising and not the doing, the intent and not the execution, that mattered, and so the wall remained unpainted, the window broken, and the table wobbly. She didn’t even want to remember that particular invention.
    Despite the chaos around him, her father, his legs sticking out from under the blanket, was contemplatively drawing crosses on the wooden floor with his wet toes. Her mother was furiously writing and crossing things off what Abby hoped was a grocery list, not a wedding list. Jedediah was turning last week’s
Weekly Herald
into an airship with Michael sitting on his shoulders, covering first one of Jed’s eyes and then the other. Prudence, for reasons beyond Abby’s understanding, had decided it was the perfect time to sing one of her favorite arias (no doubt what had driven her husband, Boone, to go hunting for gold almost a year ago, with only one letter home in all that time, asking if Pru might send him a few extra dollars for a new pan and boots). Patience, an apron tied around her head, was dancing with Gwendolyn in her arms, humming a waltz that sounded suspiciously like the wedding march.
    A big dose of this family all at once would probably kill Seth, she thought. He was, after all, used to a quiet life with Sarah.
    But surely Seth would warm to them eventually.
    If he encountered them in small enough doses.
    He had a broken spirit. Just as if he had a broken leg, he needed to rest it a bit. And then, just as he’d dowith a broken leg, he needed to exercise it, strengthen it.
    And she could help him.
    If he let her.
    She took a deep breath. If she waited for him to let her, it could be too late.
    “It’s hot,” Patience told her mother, taking the heavy iron from the stove.
    A plan taking shape in her head, Abby came up behind her mother and gave the woman a big hug. “Then it’s time to strike,” she said, kissing her mother’s hair.
    Seth had seen six patients since running out to Joseph Panner’s house. Three were simple accidents that required little more than a bandage and the assurance that all would be well. Two were coughs and colds that he felt pretty sure would not develop into the influenza or pneumonia. The last, Mrs. Denton’s little boy, was the one that was troubling him now, as he read through his latest journal and sipped a cup of the morning’s now-cold tea.
    He recognized the sound of Abidance Merganser’s feet as they climbed the steps and crossed his porch, and what was left of his heart fell into his stomach. What had he ever done to deserve his own little Miss Sunshine? Whatever it was, he was sorry he’d done it. Why she still had faith in him after he’d let Sarrie die, he didn’t know.
    But she did, still looking at him with that cheerful, hopeful face, those big bright eyes that shouted she was his for the taking. It was as if she were tauntinghim, holding out a life to him that he could never embrace, a hand he had no right to claim.
    First off, she was too young, too innocent, too untouched by the awful things that life could hand a person, to be soiled by the life he led. He imagined trudging home from Mrs. Denton’s and having Abby waiting there, glowing, only to have him tell her that the boy had taken a turn for the worse, that all the tricks he had in that medical bag of his wouldn’t be enough. And where would her smile go then?
    Second, his was an orderly life that ran according to the demands of his practice. He needed the calm, the quiet, the serenity of living alone, having to meet no one else’s needs when the day was done. She’d want to see him smile, laugh, engage him in ridiculous conversations. There was no place for that in his life.
    Most importantly, he was leaving. As soon as one of the medical colleges or hospitals he had written to could offer him a suitable replacement, he was leaving Eden’s Grove—and medicine—behind